Sheldon Whitehouse is a
sitting U.S.senator. It's important to keep this in mind:
Fossil fuel companies and their allies are funding a massive and sophisticated campaign to mislead the American people about the environmental harm caused by carbon pollution.
Their activities are often compared to those of Big Tobacco denying the health dangers of smoking. Big Tobacco’s denial scheme was ultimately found by a federal judge to have amounted to a racketeering enterprise.
Often? Really? Go on.
The Big Tobacco playbook looked something like this: (1) pay scientists to produce studies defending your product; (2) develop an intricate web of PR experts and front groups to spread doubt about the real science; (3) relentlessly attack your opponents.
Thankfully, the government had a playbook, too: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. In 1999, the Justice Department filed a civil RICO lawsuit against the major tobacco companies and their associated industry groups, alleging that the companies “engaged in and executed — and continue to engage in and execute — a massive 50-year scheme to defraud the public, including consumers of cigarettes, in violation of RICO.”
So, if you are skeptical of the scientific claims concerning climate, RICO might be the solution. Get your mind right, kids. Get your mind right.
20 comments:
Sauce for the goose....I seem to remember that the main perpetrators of the AGW fraud are funded by a corrupt organization based in Washington, DC.
It takes a special kind of willful ignorance to simultanously assert that thousands of scientists worldwide constitue a conspiracy to commit fraud, and to refuse to entertain the possibilty that a multibillion dollar industry might cook the books to protect their bottom line.
Nobody's arguing that, Brian. What I'd argue is that governments interested in control of economies and the energy supply are going to have a bias just as certainly as fossil fuel producers.
And really, when you take a look at the list of scandals in climatology in the past 20 years, it appears that most of the scandals are revealed by interested outsiders. Inside the field, there appears to be a level of group-think that parallels situations like that we're discussing regarding Orange County law enforcement.
OK, so why is that? Is it just a coincidence due to the assumptions of those funding the research, or is something more sinister at hand? If it is just a coincidence, why are known conspirators like those in East Anglia and Michael Mann still receiving funding?
Are we okay with using the RICO statute in the manner Whitehouse suggests?
Do you think it was used appropriately against the tobacco companies in prosecuting an alleged ongoing conspiracy to defraud? Because that's what he's suggesting here, not deploying the thought police to "get your mind right."
Brian, given that RICO is really intended to deal with the Mob, I think it's a clumsy tool at best to deal with tobacco companies or global climate change research, don't you think?
To use the tobacco picture, can we really believe that any conspiracy would have been successful--that any literate, or even TV-watching, person in the US would have been fooled? I am very, very skeptical of that. The labels have been on cancer sticks since the early sixties, tons of anti-smoking ads, and people are tricked? Not buying it.
Moreover, recovering the costs of healthcare for tobacco related disease simply required a vote of Congress--something which I remember being attempted, but this move was countered when some pointed out that the shorter lifespan of smokers actually reduced the costs on government. More costs for lung cancer, less for social security, if I remember right.
So the RICO lawsuit for tobacco was more or less a solution in search of a problem....or, if you will, "thought police."
The RICO case against the tobacco companies was problematic for a lot of reasons, since they were engaged in selling a legal product. At this point, they are still selling the product and a number of other permutations. We ban patent medicines, but we haven't banned tobacco. There's no secret as to the reason why -- the sale of this dangerous, even deadly product, raises a lot of money for governments at a variety of levels. A pack of smokes in the Twin Cities is about $8 and over half of that money is in taxes.
And lest you think I'm trying to defend the tobacco companies, understand this -- I am the son of a mother who died as a result of complications from cancer and emphysema, brought on by a 40+ year, pack-a-day smoking habit.
The getting your mind right is exactly what's going on here, because the threat of RICO litigation for what is still, for the moment, free speech, is pretty damned troubling to me. If Bill Nye, or Neil DeGrasse Tyson, want to shout their imprecations to the housetops, that's cool with me, but when a sitting United States senator threatens people for expressing opinions that run counter to the current scientific consensus, that's problematic as hell.
And although it should be obvious, let's spell it out -- scientific consensus doesn't mean the science is settled, especially in climate science, since we have a lot of open questions and we have a lot of people who are looking at the data and trying to decipher the meaning of things. I'm also old enough to remember some of the predictions that Paul Ehrlich made, which had a pretty broad scientific consensus 40-45 years ago. Things don’t always turn out as we predict. And I observe a lot of people who aren't research scientists have a pretty substantial financial interest in driving this debate. I don't find that especially troubling, since I assume most people are operating out of their own financial interest; that's how you pay the bills. Not too many are doing this work pro bono, either. Just because someone is getting paid for their work product, either from a government grant or from the operating budget of a corporation, doesn't per se mean they have sold their souls.
We are simply too far apart on the merits of RICO prosecution of tobacco companies to have a productive discussion about it, so I'll set that aside. If you don't think what they did rises to the level of a criminal conspiracy, it is difficult to imagine any scenario in which you think an analogous action by the fossil fuel (or any other) industry would.
Still, Mark...you are arguing with what you imagine Whitehouse's intent to be, rather than what he actually said. Expressing an opinion is free speech. Fraud is not. He's talking about fraud:
"The tobacco industry was proved to have conducted research that showed the direct opposite of what the industry stated publicly — namely, that tobacco use had serious health effects. Civil discovery would reveal whether and to what extent the fossil fuel industry has crossed this same line. We do know that it has funded research that — to its benefit — directly contradicts the vast majority of peer-reviewed climate science."
If I say I don't believe in anthropogenic climate change, I'm engaging in free speech. If publish data that no one can replicate, I may be a sloppy scientist, or simply unlucky. (Alternatively, I may be uncommonly lucky and be the one out of a thousand that got it right. This is certainly possible, but much less likely.) But if I knowingly publish or otherwise disseminate fraudulent data for the purposes of influencing policy and/or the value of my assets, I am not exercising my First Amendment rights. I'm committing fraud. It isn't exactly a subtle distinction.
But if I knowingly publish or otherwise disseminate fraudulent data for the purposes of influencing policy and/or the value of my assets, I am not exercising my First Amendment rights. I'm committing fraud. It isn't exactly a subtle distinction.
something every senator and congressman is guilty of in one topic or another. let the RICO proceedings begin! i'll get the guillotine oiled up...
Government has a monopoly on force, so I'd better damned well pay attention to Whitehouse's intent. I pay attention to threats.
something every senator and congressman is guilty of in one topic or another. let the RICO proceedings begin! i'll get the guillotine oiled up...
Yep.
But if I knowingly publish or otherwise disseminate fraudulent data for the purposes of influencing policy and/or the value of my assets, I am not exercising my First Amendment rights. I'm committing fraud. It isn't exactly a subtle distinction.
The Leader of the Free World made all manner of promises concerning the Affordable Health Care Act. There are videos out there that show Barack Obama promising that passage of the law would deliver a $2500 savings in health insurance premiums. One that I've seen shows that he made that promise on at least 19 different occasions. If we were to conduct sufficient discovery in 2017, after the current administration leaves office, we would likely find that Obama made promises on the hustings that were contradicted by studies conducted by his own administration. Would you recommend that the next Attorney General pursue a RICO prosecution against Obama?
But if I knowingly publish or otherwise disseminate fraudulent data for the purposes of influencing policy and/or the value of my assets, I am not exercising my First Amendment rights. I'm committing fraud. It isn't exactly a subtle distinction.
Speaking of fraud…. There is pending litigation involving Michael Mann, a professor at Penn State University who has been one of the most prominent scientists in the climate change discussion, and syndicated columnist Mark Steyn, who alleged in a published column that Mann's work was fraudulent. Mann has sued Steyn, who has refused to back down from his assertion and is seeking to go to trial in the matter, rather than settle. Steyn has pursued aggressive discovery against Mann. If Steyn prevails at trial, would you consider Mann to have committed fraud? And would you recommend that he and his associates be tried under the RICO statute?
Don't be fatuous. The "C" in RICO stands for "conspiracy". There is no conspiracy in either situation as you've described them. And fraud is not simply lying. Nor is it being incorrect.
No, the C in RICO stands for Corrupt, not conspiracy. The law is here (pdf).
The relevant section begins at p. 941.
There was conspiracy demonstrated in East Anglia, though, Brian. Thousands of emails were released that demonstrated that pretty clearly. Mann was implicated as well if I remember correctly in that exchange. Plus, the discussions in IPCC meetings ought to be considered a conspiracy as well. RICO would be nasty to these guys...
Of course, that assumes that the Department of Justice can be persuaded to prosecute....and that is the crux of the problem with what the Senator was telegraphing. Gosh, what is he going to tell the DOJ to do when he can't get the cigarette taxes/Kyoto Protocol approved in the Senate? It doesn't take a Ph.D. to figure it out. (maybe it helps if you aren't a Ph.D.?)
Personally, my favored remedy for fraudsters like Michael Mann and those in East Anglia is "loss of funding and reputation", not prosecution. Given that the tides of politics may change, Brian, and that you're involved in research yourself, I'd commend this approach to you, too. The good Senator is getting awfully close to prosecuting thought crimes.
I wanna be the to pull the lever on al gore when the procedings are over.
Here's my point -- RICO is a criminal statute designed to punish illegal activities, especially racketeering. The tobacco companies were selling a legal product, and they are still selling their product. You see a lot of criminal activity in the cigarette market, but most of it stems from tax evasion, i.e., selling smokes without tax stamps on the black market. The reason the government is concerned about these activities is because they want the money, too.
Is misrepresenting what your product does in your marketing a fraudulent activity? Sure. Is it prosecutable? Maybe not so much — it's pretty telling that no one from RJR or Phillip Morris saw a jail cell. And was there countervailing evidence available to the customers of the tobacco companies? Of course. The first surgeon general's warning came out in 1964 and it's been illegal to advertise cigarettes on television and radio since 1971. You probably never saw a cigarette ad in your life on live television. I barely remember them.
And if you want to talk about corruption, do you remember the fanfare from the states and the feds concerning how the master agreement would help smokers? So did that happen? Not so much, of course; the states mostly spent the money on general fund items rather than cessation programs and the like. No surprise there — the states don't really want people to quit smoking, because they are addicted to tax revenue as much as smokers are addicted to tobacco. Is that fraud? You can make that argument; it sure the hell seems like a bait and switch to me. Is what the states did corrupt? I think so. Would I prosecute anyone in the government for it? No, but I'd sure the hell want to vote them out of office. I'm outnumbered on that, though.
I support, and continue to support, civil lawsuits against Big Tobacco, although I strongly prefer individual settlements, since the class action and the government suits do a poor job of compensating victims.
Just for reference; I grew up with asthma, so I'm no defender of tobacco, either. I just don't think the Clinton administration's invocation of RICO was right.
And for that matter, I'm not hostile to the idea that there is such a thing as a greenhouse gas, or that in certain extremities people might affect the climate. I'm not even hostile to a tax on fossil fuel use/carbon tax. What gives me the willies is when every setback to the theory is trumpeted as a triumph for the theory, and every solution is taken lock, stock, and barrel from the political tradition that gave us the environmental disasters of the old Warsaw Pact.
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